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The
late science fiction author Robert A, Heinlein, born and raised in Missouri, has
been widely read and widely discussed. In his works we may see the fundamental
dichotomies of the twentieth-century American consciousness: idealism and
pragmatism, interventionism and isolationism, internationalism and Social
Darwinism. The presence of such contradictory values in the United States is
enough of a truism, I hope, to require little discussion. Robert Scholes and
Eric S. Rabkin consider Heinlein "in some respects...the most typically American
writer in all the ranks of science fiction" (56), and H. Bruce Franklin calls
him "a very representative American" (5-6); his very popular works perhaps shape
America almost as much as they reflect it.

Nearly all are familiar with the libertarian, laissez faire philosophies of
government espoused in many Heinlein works. Generally Heinlein believes that
individuals should be free to succeed or fail on their own, without the
government either unduly restricting the clever or aiding the less able. Life,
we are repeatedly told, is a struggle for existence, with the human species
being strengthened by the survival of the intelligent and resourceful and, C. W.
Sullivan III correctly reminds us, those who demonstrate "perseverance,
loyalty,... idealism, integrity, and courage" (65).

For
such sentiments Heinlein is almost universally considered a Social Darwinist.
Brian Aldiss, Peter Nicholls, Franz Rottensteiner, and Scholes and Rabkin all
class him as such, often rather derisively. Even Dennis E. Showalter, for all
his care to clear Heinlein of the charges of fascism and militarism, still
refers easily to "Heinlein's crude Social Darwinism" (115). Alexei Panshin holds
that "Heinlein's idea of liberty is wolfish and thoroughgoing" (162), and
despite his interest in Calvinist aspects of Heinlein's work, George Edgar
Slusser also nods to Heinlein's "Darwinian" idea that "man must fight" (Classic
8; RAH 22). Certainly there is troth to such charges, though the rhetoric
occasionally is unduly sneering.

Yet
such easy categorization may indeed be too easy. The Darwinistic pressures at
work in Heinlein's fictions, after all, often are natural ones, physical forces
against which it would be foolish not to struggle: environmental extremes,
diseases, predatory creatures - including intelligent ones. Moreover, Heinlein's
purported "wolfishness" has been rather one-sidedly emphasized. Frank H. Tucker
is more careful when he notes the Darwinistic elements in Heinlein's works
without too easily attributing to Heinlein the "thoroughly ruthless approach to
human affairs" which the label of Social Darwinist usually includes (172-73).
Moreover, though Leon Stover may overstate his case somewhat, there is some
truth to his assertion that Heinlein actually does not espouse "economic warfare
battled out within the species for the sake of its top dogs, as if man were just
another animal" (29). Although when the pressures are economic, Heinlein does
often advocate an "every man for himself" philosophy, he also complains to
varying degrees against monopolies and unjust big business in such pieces as
"'Let There Be Light'" (1940), "Logic of Empire" (1941), Red Planet (1949),
Starman Jones (1953), and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966). As Tucker
concedes, "There are contradictions and dilemmas..." throughout Heinlein's work
(192).(1)

Concerning the militaristic and expansionistic aspects of Social Darwinism,
however, Heinlein takes a much clearer stance. When the pressures acting upon
individuals and nations are the result of military aggression, Heinlein's
Darwinistic message of struggle is not a celebration of mindless expansionism
but, consistently, a call to arms to those who would remain free; he espouses
justifiable defense rather than rapacious offense. The distinction is an
important one which often seems to be missed.

Indeed, despite the often-decried undercurrent of Social Darwinism in Heinlein's
science fiction, there also exists a significant dallying with transnational
political organizations. Heinlein's idealism and pragmatism concerning
international relations constantly temper each other, often producing entities
that, if not necessarily ideals of charity and brotherhood, at least are not
mindless predatory organisms but instead are commonsensical and neighborly.
Heinlein seems to suggest - correctly, I believe - that without collective
security we could find ourselves at the mercy of the real Social Darwinists.

Heinlein's work with transnational organizations can be grouped into four main
categories: the earlier, more idealistic novels such as Space Cadet (1948),
which incorporate fairly successful transnational organizations that often
attempt not only to keep the peace but to do other good as well, saving lives
and protecting individual rights, all the while supported by generally
democratic political infrastructures; the later, more cautiously
internationalist novels exemplified by Have Space Suit - Will Travel (1958) and
Glory Road (1963), wherein organizations consciously limit themselves to an
often more pragmatic peacekeeping; the infrequent warnings against governmental
intrusion, like Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) and The Moon Is a Harsh
Mistress (1966); and, of course, the occasional pieces like Farmer in the Sky
(1950) and Time for the Stars (1956), which merely employ some basically
unexamined form of world government as a conventionalized science fictional
backdrop. Though in 1958 Heinlein wrote to his agent decrying the naivete of the
"starry-eyed internationalists" who urged disarmament and who longed for a
"world state" (Grumbles 210), in his own work Heinlein himself apparently cannot
help longing for some sort of transnational peacekeeping entity, albeit often a
more practical one.

In
most of his juvenile novels, written between 1947 and 1959, Heinlein postulates
successful or at least quasi-successful transnational organizations. Presented
approvingly, at first with conveniently little detail of their development or
workings though later with more detail, many seem driven less by simple national
self-interest than by self-sacrificing idealism and notions of collective
security. Fred Erisman notes that the Scribner's juveniles "reinforce Heinlein's
belief in informed action and acceptance of responsibility as earmarks of the
mature citizen" (99); I agree, and I suggest that Heinlein often moves farther,
from the mature citizen to the mature nation. Although there are exceptions,
some of his earliest novels are his most idealistic and optimistic.

In
Rocket Ship Galileo (1947) the United Nations controls a great stockpile of
nuclear weapons (153), including "the UN's Doomsday Bomb" of 1951 (46). Although
independent nations still exist, the "UN police" ensure that "Wars are out"
(46); at the very end of the book the willingness to enforce this peace is
emphasized when the UN flexes its muscles to capture the last stronghold of
Nazis threatening world takeover (186). In this juvenile work the stability of
the policing system is taken for granted, never truly explained and certainly
never questioned.

Space Cadet (1948), which takes place late in the twenty-first century, over a
hundred years after Rocket Ship Galileo, supposes the existence of a "Solar
Federation" (47). based on the three noble yet nebulous principles of "Freedom,
Peace, and Law" (44), the Federation consists of large nations such as the North
American Union and, apparently, small nations in which "some pipsqueak Hitler"
(111) still might come to power. The Federation has a constitution, though we
never learn precisely how the Terran nations interact within it.

The
policing arm of the Federation is the Interplanetary Patrol. Responsible "to
keep the peace of the Solar System and to protect the liberties of its peoples"
(46), it very conspicuously contains members not only from North America but
from Africa and Asia and the human colonies on Venus and Ganymede. The easy
tolerance of the Patrol may have seemed very forward looking when the book was
written, and Heinlein reinforces the point by having a cadet gently remind one
new recruit that while it is fine for another to volunteer information about his
origins, "it is incorrect for you to ask him" (17). The protagonist, with this
overheard lesson "stuck in his memory" (17), internalizes the multinational and
multi-ethnic ethos, and when his father tries to convince the idealistic cadet
that the Patrol could never act against the North American Union, the young man
is quietly incensed at such provincial nationalism (123-24).

Although in this book - and in the story "The Long Watch" (1949) - we are
informed of an attempted revolt from Moon Base early in the history of the
Patrol, it is quickly stopped (Space Cadet 24; Past 263-76). According to one
officer, "We might have ended up with the tightest, most nearly unbreakable
tyranny the world has ever seen. But the human race got a couple of lucky
breaks, and it didn't work out that way. It's the business of the Patrol to see
that it stays lucky" (Space Cadet 110). Eighty years later the Patrol apparently
runs with unexplained flawlessness, using the "space marines" as a "switch" to
control the tantrums of misbehaving nations (111) and maintaining its nuclear
"prowler bombs" in overlapping polar orbits as the ultimate deterrent (118-24).

Although the Patrol thus is armed most fearsomely, its ideological underpinnings
are wonderfully noble. At their swearing-in ceremony the cadets are told, "It is
not enough that you be skilled, clever, brave - The trustees of this awful power
must each possess a meticulous sense of honor, self-discipline beyond all
ambition, conceit, or avarice, respect for the liberties and dignity of all
creatures, and an unyielding will to do justice and give mercy. He must be a
true and gentle knight" (46). Later one officer explains to a cadet, "Strictly
speaking, the Patrol is not a military organization at all." He continues, "your
purpose is not to fight, but to prevent fighting, by every possible means. The
Patrol is not a fighting organization; it is the repository of weapons too
dangerous to entrust to military men" (110). Unlike Rocket Ship Galileo,
therefore, Space Cadet does at least address the question of stability, though
it smoothly glosses over readers' doubts.

The
easy-going novel The Star Beast (1954), set around three centuries ahead of the
present (223) in a future of interstellar travel, is another good example of the
optimistic idealism of Heinlein's early juveniles. The Federation's central
government, like that in Space Cadet, seems to operate smoothly and justly, and
while it encompasses many planets, its laws "will not trample on local law and
custom except where they are hopelessly opposed to superior law" (56). The
Federation's own "ancient custom," we are told, is "'All for One'... against the
Galaxy if necessary" (214), meaning that human rights are held so strongly that
the Federation will not unjustly surrender one of its citizens to another power
even to avert a disastrous war.

Whereas in Space Cadet decisions of policy apparently are made gravely and
professionally at some high level unseen by the readers, in The Star Beast we
get a glimpse of such workings. Unsurprisingly, the politicking is rather
reminiscent of the United States's political system, with great nations and
planets like the states in our federal system - or, perhaps more accurately,
like the nations of the United Nations. The Secretariat of the Federation "is
responsible not to the North American Union, nor even to the peoples of Earth,
but to all the sovereignties of the Federation, both on Terra and elsewhere"
(198), and there is mention both of the Federation Council's process of
requiring votes of confidence and of some sort of local elections as well. The
system is presented as workable and fair.

In
this novel we may also see a hint of pragmatism alongside the idealism. A senior
diplomat explains that because the complexity and danger of so many situations
in the modern world require the urgent attention of highly trained specialists,
their political system "is not now a real democracy and it can't be": "It would
be pleasant to discuss each problem, take a vote, then repeal it later if the
collective judgment proved faulty. But it's rarely that easy. We find ourselves
oftener like pilots of a ship in a life-and-death emergency. Is it the pilot's
duty to hold powwows with passengers? Or is it his job to use his skill and
experience to try to bring them home safely?" (223). Yet Heinlein will not let
us forget the idealism, for the diplomat also maintains, "we have managed to
keep a jury-rigged republican government and to maintain democratic customs. We
can be proud of that" (223).

Double Star (1956) displays a similar mix of idealism and pragmatism concerning
the transnational sphere. Although the Empire of this novel is a constitutional
monarchy rather than a democracy, one character assures the protagonist, "our
present system insures responsible government" (76). Advised in his duties by a
Supreme Minister (95) and by a Grand Assembly (76) elected by franchise, which
appears still to be fractionally short of universal (32), the Emperor "maintain[s]
continuity, preserving the symbol of the state"; his position "is not glamorous,
but it is useful" (98).

Throughout the book, Heinlein throws in many incidental points about this system
of government, but in contrast to such pragmatic, workable politics are the
ideals that underlie it. The Expansionist Party, for which the protagonist is
working, "is founded on the notion that free trade, free travel, common
citizenship, common currency, and a minimum of Imperial laws and restrictions
are good not only for the citizens of the empire but for the Empire itself"
(96). Just as racism apparently is long dead, the government with its
legislation even helps break down speciesism: "Martians must be granted the same
privileges on Earth that humans enjoyed on Mars" (85), and apparently Mars soon
will be accepted into the Empire (95). Clearly the Empire of this book is
working toward freedom and justice.

In
Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) Heinlein creates a colorful, gritty future wherein
an elite military organization struggles against the widespread slavery which
"starts up in every new land and... is terribly hard to root out" (180). Human
interstellar colonization has expanded to "a globe of space nine hundred
light-years in diameter, the center of which [is] legendary Terra, the cradle of
mankind" (127), and cultures are so disparate that they might receive
anthropological investigation. To the less-educated people at the peripheries,
the distant Earth truly is a myth, while to those at the center, the existence
of slavery beyond the fairly well policed boundaries of the Terran Hegemony is
quite literally incredible.

Standing against the greed on one side and the ignorance on the other, however,
is the Space Guard. The Captain of a Guard ship explains to the protagonist:

[T]he
Guard is just the policeman and the mailman; we haven't had a major war in two
centuries. What we do work at is the impossible job of maintaining order on the
frontier, a globe three thousand light-years in circumference - no one can
understand how big it is; the mind can't swallow it.

Nor
can human beings police it. It gets bigger every year. Dirtside police
eventually close the gaps. But with us, the longer we try the more there is. So
to most of us it's a job, an honest job, but one that can never be satisfied.
(180)

The
noble job is made more difficult because even "The Terran Hegemony is no empire;
it is simply leadership in a loose confederation of planets. The difference
between what the Guard could do and what it is allowed to do is very
frustrating" (233). The overall political situation may be far from ideal, but
the guardians of decency seem close to it; they are more than simple
peacekeepers.

Just as the Guard's task is idealistic, so is its very organization. Members
"like to think of the Service as one enormous 'family"' (173), in camaraderie
and in commitment to duty. Recruits come from throughout the human sphere, and
ships' crews are purposefully comprised of men "from many planets"; "nobody
care[s] where a man came from or what he ha[s] been" (175). When crew members
notice the tattoo mark of the protagonist's former slavery, "Responses var[y]
from curiosity, through half-disbelief, to awed surprise that here was a man who
had been through it capture, sale, servitude, and miraculously, free again. Most
civilians [do] not realize that slavery still exist[s]; Guardsmen [know] better.
No one [is] nasty about it" (184). Indeed, in an echo of Space Cadet, when one
obnoxious crewman finally does sneer, the Captain cites him for "Inciting to
Riot, specification: using derogatory language with reference to another
Guardsman's Race, Religion, Birthplace, or Condition previous to entering
Service," and the man receives a harsher sentence than the one who is goaded
into throwing a bowl of mashed potatoes in his face (186).

Despite the great uproar surrounding Starship Troopers (1959), I consider this
novel also to be one of Heinlein's idealistic treatments of internationalism,
for the central government goes beyond mere restrained peacekeeping to the
protection of human lives and rights. Unlike the slick, under-explained idealism
Rocket Ship Galileo or Space Cadet, of course, the underlying ethics of this
later book run parallel with more pragmatic realism. Yet just as the meritocracy
of the career diplomats of The Star Beast does not lessen that work's respect
for the individual and reverence for "republican government and . . . democratic
customs" (223), neither does the pragmatism of Starship Troopers lessen this
work's basic respect for individual and collective freedom, and the
self-sacrificing commitment such freedom sometimes may require.

Certainly there is much pragmatism in Heinlein's twenty-eighth-century Terran
Federation, that loose multinational government - not an organ of "imperialism,"
as H. Bruce Franklin apparently likes to imagine it (112) - whose Constitution
guarantees "liberties and privileges [to] all citizens and lawful residents of
the Federation, its associated states and territories" (30). Franchise is
limited to those volunteers who have served a two-year stint in the military
whether in combat units or in "the various non-combatant auxiliary corps" (32) -
or, for "career men," a twenty-year term (128). Heinlein presents these
veterans, however, as being neither smarter nor more disciplined than civilians.
Moreover, "nobody can describe accurately how the Federation came about; it just
grew. With national governments in collapse at the end of the XXth century,
something had to fill the vacuum, and in many cases it was returned veterans. .
. .What started as an emergency measure became constitutional practice . . . in
a generation or two" (142).

Yet
underlying this "practical" system which "works satisfactorily" (143) is the
very idealistic concept of self-sacrifice. An instructor in Officer Candidates
School explains the situation:

Under our present system every voter and officeholder is a man [or woman] who
has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the
welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage....

He
may fail in wisdom, he may lapse in civic virtue. But his average performance is
enormously better than that of any class of rulers in history.... [W]e have
democracy unlimited by race, color, creed, birth, wealth, sex, or conviction,
and anyone may win sovereign power by a usually short and not too arduous term
of service nothing more than a light workout to our cave-man ancestors. . . .
Since sovereign franchise is the ultimate in human authority, we insure that all
who wield it accept the ultimate in social responsibility - we require each
person who wishes to exert control over the state to wager his own life and lose
it, if need be - to save the life of the state. The maximum responsibility a
human can accept is thus equated with the ultimate authority a human can exert.
Yin and yang, perfect and equal (144-46).

The
result, we are told, is that "personal freedom for all is greatest in history,
living standards are as high as productivity permits, crime is at its lowest
ebb" (144). The critic need not agree that such results will stem from the
stated causes, but the society as drawn definitely is not the "megalomaniac"
world Brian Aldiss portrays it (318).

The
emphasis on self-sacrifice and responsibility for the whole is reiterated
throughout the novel. A person's "noblest fate," we are told, is to protect his
"beloved home" (74). Though some will misinterpret this as mere knee-jerk
nationalism, Heinlein is not simply flag-waving, for he also puts the human most
carefully into the equation:

How
often have you seen a headline like this? TWO DIE ATTEMPTING RESCUE OF DROWNING
CHILD. If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two
or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost just as many
volunteers turn out.

Poor arithmetic . . . but very human. It runs through our folklore, all human
religions, all our literature a racial conviction that when one human needs
rescue, others should not count the price. (176)

Clearly, despite an unfortunate tendency for characters to want to settle
matters with their knuckles or slug it out in the cliched "friendly" brawl, the
overriding importance of the noble concern not simply for the legal concept of
the State but for the community itself with all the rights and privileges of the
individual - should not be forgotten.

David N. Samuelson contends that during the 1950s Heinlein "continued to be
involved in a kind of special pleading" for, among other things, "a one-world
viewpoint" (60); though there is some truth to this, the contention is rather
overstated. Heinlein's "starry-eyed internationalists" letter notwithstanding
(Grumbles 210), Heinlein's fiction usually suggests not true world government
but world cooperation. The nation-state, after all, often still exists.
Moreover, the apparently infallible professional idealism of the Interplanetary
Patrol of Space Cadet and the Space Guard of Citizen of the Galaxy comes to be
replaced by a more pragmatic sense of collective security, a sense which grows
ever stronger as the 1950s continue.

Have Space Suit - Will Travel (1958), for example, returns to a Federated Free
Nations less grandiose and far more manageable than the Solar Federation of
Space Cadet. Though the secretary general and the Security Council may command
military forces for international police actions (256-57), individual nations
still have their own defenses. Despite the existence of the Security Council,
and in great contrast to the situation of Heinlein's earlier juveniles, these
countries possess not mere small conventional forces but their own nuclear
weapons as well. After all, the Distant Early Warning radar line, being strung
across the Canadian arctic to watch for Soviet bombers even as Heinlein wrote,
still is in existence in this book's near-future (223), and it is mentioned in
passing that some anti-aircraft missiles - much like the Nikes of the late 1950s
- still carry small nuclear warheads (241).

Perhaps even more interesting is the intergalactic "security council" in which
the two human protagonists find themselves - and their species - being tried.
The spokesman for the million-year-old (227) Three Galaxies, the Moderator of
the proceedings, explains, "This is not a court of justice. . . . You would call
it a 'Security Council.' Or you might call it a committee of vigilantes. It does
not matter what you call it; my sole purpose is to examine your race and see if
you threaten our survival. If you do, I will now dispose of you. The only way to
avert a grave danger is to remove it while it is small" (232). When the teenaged
boy protests against the idea of a government that arbitrarily could judge
Earth, the Moderator replies, "Correction. Three Galaxies is not a government;
conditions for government cannot obtain in so vast a space, such varied
cultures. We have simply formed police districts for mutual protection" (236).
The unworkable idealism of Space Cadet may have faded, but the hope for peace
and the necessity of transnational cooperation remain.

Indeed, the motives of the Three Galaxies are not at all the selfish, Social
Darwinistic ones that so easily could be imagined. While there may be no true
unity "in so vast a space, such varied cultures" (236), the motto of the
organization is "Three Galaxies, One Law" (205), and their trials proceed by
strict and basically equitable rules, judged by a combination of machine and
"any dozen dozens" of living creatures (227). All decisions are unanimous, and
we are told that no mistake has been made for over a million years (227-28).

This court has the power to rotate an offending planet into another dimension
without its sun (222), but such decisions are made for defensive rather than
aggressive reasons. One planet is condemned to this destruction because of its
expansionism (221), and it is feared that humanity's "savagery, combined with
superior intelligence" (235) will become a similar threat once it has attained
interstellar travel. Yet the hive mind, supported by species that are "lover[s]
of justice" (239) and that "are compassionate,... not foolish" (238), decides
that humanity is to be put under probation, to be watched and even assisted with
"loving forbearance" (239-40). Clearly the so-called vigilantes have gone out of
their way to be just while keeping the peace.

Glory Road (1963) provides another example of pragmatic collective security.
Although the multi-dimensional "Twenty Universes include many real empires"
(211), the overarching "non-system holds together by having no togetherness, no
uniformity, never seeking perfection, no utopias - just answers good enough to
get by, with lots of looseness and room for many ways and attitudes. . . .Local
affairs are local. Infanticide? - they're your babies, your planet. PTAs, movie
censorship, disaster relief - the Empire is ponderously unhelpful" (215-16).
While the grand ideal of the protection of all intelligent beings by some higher
authority as seen in Space Cadet has disappeared, it has been replaced by a
broad - some might say cynical - tolerance for almost any kind of
self-government. As in Have Space Suit - Will Travel, however, aggression is not
permitted: "Thou Shalt Not Blow Up Thy Neighbors' Planet" (214), we are told, is
the main type of rule enforced.

Even more pragmatically internationalist than Glory Road is the much earlier
Solution Unsatisfactory" (1941), which shows the enforcing of a peace less
successful than that of the Twenty Universes. In this story the United States,
still basically isolationist in the Second World War, develops a radioactive
dust with a half-life short enough that when spread from the air can be used as
an effective weapon of mass destruction without concern for long-term
contamination. After helping the British defeat the Nazis, the United States
enforces a Pax Americana, requiring a ban on air travel except for those
aircraft run by the American military. When the Secretary of Commerce protests
that such a measure is "unconstitutional" and "violates civil rights," the
director of the weapons project replies in true Heinleinian fashion, "Killing a
man violates his civil rights, too" (Expanded 126).

Heinlein does devote discussion to the ethics of the situation, but eventually,
as in the real world, pragmatism - yet an enlightened and benevolent pragmatism
- prevails. Although the developer of the radioactive dust agrees that "world
democracy would be a very fine thing" and says he "would willingly lay down
[his] life to accomplish it," he also recognizes that, at least for the present,
the world is still too divided by hatred and handicapped by a general lack of
education; a destructive cycle of nuclear war would be certain to result (128).
The rest of the world is soon disarmed, and after a brief and abortive war begun
by the "Eurasian Union," for a short time the world is at peace.

However, the United States itself is a threat to that peace. The story's
narrator writes, "I had the usual subconscious conviction that our country would
never use power in sheer aggression. Later I thought about the Mexican War and
the Spanish-American War and some of the things we did in Central America, and I
was not so sure -" (111-12). Considering the date of writing, this is a
significant perception. Later the narrator explains, "The hazard was this:
Foreign policy is lodged jointly in the hands of the President and the Congress.
We were fortunate at the time in having a good President and an adequate
Congress, but that was no guarantee for the future. We have had unfit Presidents
and power-hungry Congresses - oh, yes! Read the history of the Mexican War"
(138-39).

The
man who headed the wartime research project, therefore, begins creating "The
Commission of World Safety," "a body with the integrity, permanence, and freedom
from outside pressure possessed by the Supreme Court of the United States"; it
is to be headed by Commissioners whose oath is not to the U.S. Constitution but
"to preserve the peace of the world" (140). Screened by psychological testing
and interviews, the members of the Commission's "Peace Patrol" are "to be a
deliberately expatriated band of Janizaries, with an obligation only to the
Commission and to the race, and welded together with a carefully nurtured esprit
de corps" (141). Here, it seems, is the kind of peacekeeping organization which
later turns up in Space Cadet.

However, when the new American president tries to disband the Commission and its
Patrol, the showdown forces the Commissioner, the original developer of the
dust, to assume world leadership; he becomes "undisputed military dictator of
the world" (143-44). Even the narrator admits, "Whether or not any man as
universally hated... can perfect the Patrol he envisioned, make it
self-perpetuating and trustworthy, I don't know" (144). The end of the story
thus significantly lacks the later novel's comforting guarantees of success, but
the scenario still might be better than the alternative: the existence of dozens
of competing nations being armed with unstoppable weapons of mass destruction.

Perhaps Heinlein's most pragmatic benevolent transnational organization -
although one that has not yet taken power - occurs in "Gulf" (1949). Certainly
the story contains some very alarming Darwinistic elements: the existence of
"New Man, homo novis, who must displace homo sapiens - is displacing him -
because he is better able to survive than is homo sap" (44), the New Men's
self-assured campaign to quietly execute those who are "clearly morally
bankrupt" (49), and the assertion that in another million years "man would be
New Man's dog" - or, it is suggested would be better, cat (47). According to one
of the New Men's leaders, his own longing for democracy is "like yearning for
the Santa Claus you believed in as a child" (48), and "More important is keeping
matches away from baby" (50). Despite this very disturbing situation, however,
he explains that New Man tries to protect the freedoms of the old: "We can give
him personal liberty, we can give him autonomy in most things, we can give him a
great measure of personal dignity and we will, because we believe that
individual freedom, at all levels, is the direction of evolution, of maximum
survival value" (61). This is far from a sentimental celebration of the worth of
the average human, but neither is it the genocide to which simple Social
Darwinism very well could lead. Even within the grim evolutionary determinism of
this story, therefore, the transnational organization of future leaders "selects
[its members] for good will and humane intentions as carefully as for ability"
(60), and as much as is possible, it tries to protect the freedom and dignity of
all. After the protagonists are killed on a mission against those trying to gain
control of a nuclear doomsday device that would destroy the entire world, the
plaque commemorating the couple's martyrdom reminds us that they "DIED FOR ALL
THEIR FELLOW MEN" (67).

In
addition to such decently working examples of world government and collective
security organizations, Heinlein does give us some occasional negative examples.
In Between Planets (1951), Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), and The Moon Is a
Harsh Mistress (1966), for example, transnational entities merely support the
status quo without any thought to ethics or justice. They illustrate what may
happen when such great organizations put mere economic stability ahead of
respect for one's citizens or one's neighbors. On those even fewer occasions
when Heinlein makes a transnational government responsible for real atrocities,
the organizations have begun not with diplomacy but with war, and the source of
their flaws are thus even more apparent.

In
Between Planets an elite organization of scientists must fight "against the
historical imperative of the last two centuries, the withering away of
individual freedom under larger and even more pervasive organizations" (153). In
this future controversial books are banned (10), and citizens are casually spied
upon (32). The members of the Interplanetary Bureau of Investigation, "the
ubiquitous security police" (20), shadow people on any hint of suspicion, and
they routinely use drugs and torture to extract information.

Yet
even here Heinlein advocates reforming the world government rather than simply
removing it and therefore perhaps letting the territories break up into
competing nations. A high- ranking conspirator explains the situation: "Any
organization that gets too big and too successful gets to be a nuisance. The
Federation got that way - it started out decently enough - and now it has to be
trimmed down to size. So that the citizens can enjoy some 'looseness"' (177). As
in his other pieces, Heinlein does not deny the need for some minimal form of
government but instead wants to circumscribe its power.

In
Stranger in a Strange Land the Federation of Free Nations (196) uses orbital
military stations to ensure world peace (71), yet rather than working for
justice as the Federation of Space Cadet - or even leaving well enough alone as
the Twenty Universes of Glory Road this government meddles. According to
Heinlein, the all-important rights "embalmed in Amendments I & IX of the United
States Constitution" have been "superseded by the Articles of World
Confederation"; moreover, a citizen's access to the higher levels of government
essentially has disappeared (125).

The
main policing arm of the Federation is the Security Service, and just in case we
miss the allusion of the initials with which it is almost always mentioned -
S.S., like Hitler's infamous Schutzstaffel, or "protective rank" - Heinlein
gives one of its officers the Germanic name Heinrich. The crusty Jubal Harshaw
then pounds it home:

Jubal conceded that cops qua cops were all right; he had met honest cops...and
even a fee-splitting constable did not deserve to be snuffed out. The Coast
Guard was an example of what cops ought to be and frequently were.

But
to be in the S.S. a man had to have larceny in his heart and sadism in his soul.
Gestapo. Storm troopers for whatever politico was in power. Jubal longed for the
days when a lawyer could cite the Bill of Rights and not have some over-riding
Federation trickery defeat him. (151)(2)

As
usual for Heinlein, because the central government possesses more than simple
peacekeeping powers, it has become intrusive and stultifying.

In
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, the eleven billion inhabitants of Earth rely on
"the Peace Forces of the Federated Nations" (151) to enforce "an absolute ban
against using H-bombs against people" (279). Guided by "the Great Charter" -
treason against which is considered treason "against all humanity" (214) - the
Federated Nations (EN.) are distantly overseen by a Grand Assembly that includes
"All great Peace Force nations, seven veto powers...: N.A. Directorate, Great
China, India, Sovunion, Pan-Africa ..., Mittleuropa, Brasilian Union" (259). The
nations of Earth are protected by the "F. N. Skytrack" (219) and the "F. N.
Peace Navy" (252), yet, as the narrator informs us, they also prudently retain
their own defensive forces:

Four great Peace Powers, and some smaller ones, had antimissile defenses; those
of North America were supposed to be best. But was subject where even F. N.
might not know. All attack weapons were held by Peace Forces but defense weapons
were each nation's own pidgin and could be secret. Guesses ranged from India,
believed to have no missile interceptors, to North America, believed to be able
to do a good job. She had done fairly well in stopping intercontinental
H-missiles in Wet Firecracker War past century. (264-65)

So
far the political situation seems fairly reminiscent of that of Have Space Suit
- Will Travel.

However, unlike the Terran peacekeeping entity of the earlier novel - which ends
up being necessary to stop an attempted alien invasion of the solar system this
organization is interested more in the status quo than in fairness. Though the
inhabitants of the lunar colony indeed have adequate political and economic
justification for requesting independence, the F.N. will not concede to changing
an advantageous one-sided relationship until Luna has demonstrated its capacity
to fight. The EN. may not try to overregulate such personal matters as marriage
and the like (211), but Heinlein still presents it as something slightly
unsavory. He notes, for example, that the former United States has "ceased to
mean anything" after being subsumed (202), and one former American assures the
narrator, "They're sorry as hell they ever turned things over to the F.N."
(281). Not as restrictive as the world government of Between Planets, the F.N.
of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress still illustrates the dangers of putting
stability ahead of respect for individual rights.

Interestingly enough, when Heinlein moves the faults of world government beyond
the "usual" degradation of human rights to the realm of atrocities, it is
because the ruling organizations have been shaped by war rather than having
evolved through the cooperative political means he obviously prefers. For
example, in "Sixth Column" (1941) - later reprinted as The Day After Tomorrow
(1951) - the PanAsians do not yet control the nations of, say, South America
(Day 48), but "they've conquered half a world, hundreds of millions of people"
(70); their rule is fiercely racist and commonly repays guerrilla attacks with
reprisals against civilians "compounded at unspeakable interest" (25). Despite
the apparent genuine goodwill of its complacent leaders, the society of
Farnham's Freehold (1964) is even more inhumane. Over two millennia after
twentieth-century Americans, Europeans, Russians, and Chinese are annihilated in
a nuclear and biological holocaust, the ruling descendants of African survivors
keep white slaves and practice a rather unlikely cannibalism. Whereas in Between
Planets, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, power
corrupts once-sound ideals and diplomacy, the pressures of war have shaped these
two aberrant worlds from the outset, producing governments that are far more
sinister and hence far less usual to Heinlein's writing.

Finally, every now and then Heinlein posits some form of either world government
or world confederation as a given pan of the setting without necessarily
suggesting much about how it should or should not be constituted. In fairly
early stories such as the Future History pieces "Misfit" (1939), "If This Goes
On -" (1940), "'- We Also Walk Dogs"' (1941), "The Green Hills of Earth" (1947),
"Space Jockey" (1947), "The Man Who Sold the Moon" (1950), and "Requiem" (1950),
Heinlein purposefully mentions a United Nations or Federation in the political
background(3); in "Jerry Was a Man" (1947) and "Ordeal in Space" (1948) no
transnational federation is named directly, but the mention of interplanetary
treaties (Assignment 191, Past 352) suggests its existence.(4) Under the
auspices of the "rainbow banner" of Terran unity - or at least of equitable
peace - Noisy Rhysling's "Green Hills of Earth" may be sung (Past 363), D. D.
Harriman's legal maneuverings may be legitimated, (200-201), "A-bomb rocket[s]
circling the globe like... policem[e]n" may continue "guarding the peace of the
planet" (230), and the young volunteers of the Cosmic Construction Corps may
"fix up the solar system so that human beings can make better use of it" (635).

Heinlein also extends such very lightly drawn governments to "Waldo" (1942),
Beyond This Horizon (1948), Farmer in the Sky (1950), Starman Jones (1953),
Tunnel in the Sky (1955), Time for the Stars (1956), and Podkayne of Mars
(1963). The transnational political organization of each of these works is taken
for granted, neither especially held up as a manifestation of desirable
political conduct nor condemned as stifling to individual freedom. The
government of Beyond This Horizon, for example, may allow its basically
contented populace individual freedom and material wealth, but it is set so far
in the future as to be more a literary experiment - a mere setting - than a
practical goal. In Tunnel in the Sky the "Terran Corporation" maintains the
world's transdimensional gates and conducts diplomacy for Earth, but when the
stereotypical "brawny Mongol policemen" of the apparently Communist
"Australasian Republic" chivvy their emigrants through the extraterritorial zone
of "Emigrants' Gap" with rough "shoving and shouting and prodding," the local
North American police are powerless (9-13); Heinlein may disapprove, and one cop
may shout a protest, but the protagonist seems to think nothing amiss. Even the
system of Starman Jones, whose restrictive hereditary guilds are blithely
supported by the Imperial government, receives what for Heinlein is a
ridiculously few token lines of protest (54, 85, 251); it is a simple backdrop
to the action, its injustices uncharacteristically skirted.

After the 1960s Heinlein's works deal rather little with transnationalism. I
Will Fear No Evil (1970), for example, features a United States that has
degenerated into "a de facto anarchy under an elected dictator even though we
still have laws and legislatures and Congress" (39). In Friday (1982) the United
States has been Balkanized, and the entire world is racked by revolutions and
corporate warfare. The optimism of his earlier work, which ranges from wild to
guarded, has faded.

Yet
Heinlein's long dalliance with transnational organization is interesting and not
at all what one might expect after reading criticism emphasizing his militarism
and Social Darwinism. Between the 1940s and the 1960s Heinlein uses world
government as a mere science fictional cliche on numerous occasions, and, rather
tellingly, he portrays it far fewer times as something to be avoided. Even more
significantly, in many works he discusses world government or world
confederation with deliberation, exploring not only the limitations of
transnationalism but also the great potentials. His is a significant, often
hopeful experimentation, and from more than thirty years of flirting with the
topic comes an important affirmation of the necessity of collective security.

Throughout his career Heinlein simply cannot resist returning again and again to
the concept of transnational organization. Early ideas of brotherly cooperation
and proactive altruism may be abandoned as overly optimistic, but the notion of
collective security at least cannot. It is easy enough to sneer loftily at "the
phallocentric weapon culture," as Donna Glee Williams does (165), yet reaching
for such a trendy term seems to me every bit as knee-jerk as reaching for a gun.
It is better to understand the situation in terms of its context the variables
of human behavior which daily remind us - in the Persian Gulf, in Bosnia, in the
inner city - of the propensity of the unscrupulous to prey upon the weak. Those
who "forget this basic truth," we are told in Starship Troopers, "have always
paid for it with their lives and freedom" (24).

Heinlein rarely says that might makes right;(5) he is correct, however, in
reminding us that might may be necessary to preserve right. For Robert A.
Heinlein, apparently, there can be no more Munichs - and rightly so; his works
rarely suggest the complete subsumation of nations into a bland, and perhaps
unrealizable, world state, but they cling doggedly to the idea of diplomacy and
multilateral agreements designed to keep an equitable peace within the community
of nations. If we forget this lesson and withdraw from the world, whether in
sordid complacency or in noble pacifism, we eventually may find ourselves at the
mercy of the real Social Darwinists.

Notes

An
early draft of this paper was presented on May 16, 1997 at the Twenty-seventh
Annual Convention of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, in East
Lansing, Michigan.

1.Certainly there are contradictions and dilemmas in Heinlein criticism as well.
To state, as Tucker does, that the corporal punishment used in Starship Troopers
against, among others, drunk drivers, is "not reserved for rare and horrible
crimes" (187) is grimly ironic: Tucker is correct to imply that drunk driving is
not rare, but I cannot help wondering whether a crime responsible for tens of
thousands of American traffic fatalities yearly indeed might not be considered
horrible.

2.
Harshaw would be satisfied with the system of "Sky Lift" (1953), wherein "the
military always [gets] stuck with these succor-&-rescue jobs" like hauling
desperately needed blood out to Pluto aboard a "torch ship" at punishingly high
acceleration (120); although in this tightly focused story Heinlein does not
call the government by name - a bit uncharacteristically - it seems a
transnational one like that of the idealistic works such as Space Cadet and
Citizen of the Galaxy.

3.
The United Nations also exists in such contemporary stories as "The Year of the
Jackpot" (1952) and "Project Nightmare" (1953), but it is mentioned only in
passing and seems as relatively powerless as its real-world equivalent. In The
Puppet Masters (1951) the UN may control the space stations (81), but in
fighting the parasitic slugs from Titan it is "no help": "they hemmed and hawed
and sent the matter back to committee for investigation" (107-8).

4.
According to Heinlein's chart of the so-called Future History, of course, "Jerry
Was a Man" does not belong to the series, but the story is perhaps no more
foreign it than "'- We Also Walk Dogs,"' which supposedly does belong (Past
360-61); certainly each story posits technologies that are present in no other
Future History works.

5.
For some unfortunate examples of might apparently making right, see the legality
of dueling in Beyond This Horizon (1948); the refusal of a revolutionary in Red
Planet "to interfere in a private quarrel" (155) that is, provide common police
protection to an officious schoolmaster from a man who has "promised him a honey
of a beating if he'll only come out and stand up ... like a man" (152); the
propensity of the soldiers of Starship Troopers to give offending fellows their
"lumps" and the novel's underlying premise that even civilized societies must
expand rather than merely remaining strong (147); and the deportation of
criminals in Time Enough for Love (1973) to a planet already inhabited by "quite
fierce savages" "neither intelligent enough to be civilized nor tractable enough
to be enslaved" (8-9).

Works Cited

Aldiss, Brian W., and David Wingrove. Trillion Year
Spree: The History of Science Fiction. New York: Atheneum, 1986.

The Heinlein
Society was founded by Virginia Heinlein on behalf of her husband, science
fiction author Robert Anson Heinlein, to "pay forward" the legacy of Robert A. Heinlein to future generations of "Heinlein's Children."